Ignavus

Bach/Sleepout

My family owns a small bit of land over on Banks Peninsula.
We bought it about 10 years ago, and for quite some time just used it as a place to go camping over the summer. It’s about a kilometre from the beach, and a short walk to the local shop & playground.

About 5 years ago we decided it was time to put something more permanent on there. We already had a shed, which we stashed some of our camping gear in, but it was all still basically camping.

So I drew up some rough plans on the computer, passed them around the various interested parties, and eventually we decided on a simple little sleep out that we could build.

Plans

The building is pretty straight forward - a single 6m x 4.2m room. French doors on one side, a single front door on another. A few windows. That’s about it. The plans I drew up can be found here.

Foundations

Because the area is a flood zone we had to elevate the floor level. This means the house sits on roughly 1 metre tall pile foundations.

Building

We did all of the construction ourselves, apart from the electrical work.

Deck

Since this is a bach, it is basically only used during summer. So we had always intended to have a huge outdoor area. We’ve now added on a great big deck, with a small covered area. This is where we spend most of the time during the day, lounging on chairs on the deck, or eating our breakfast, lunch & dinner outside.